Economic and social science data:

Offerings for the commercial sector

Louise Corti

UK Data Service / UK Data Archive

University of Essex

Open/free data available for business

RAL, Oxfordshire

6 May 2014

What is the UK Data Service?

• a comprehensive resource funded by the

Economic and Social Research Council

(ESRC)

• a single point of access to a wide range of

digital research data

• facilitate high quality social and economic

research and education

• offer support, training and guidance

throughout the data lifecycle

UK Data Service

ukdataservice.ac.uk

Integrates ESDS, Survey

Question Bank and

Census.ac.uk

Who is the Service for?

• academic researchers and students

• government analysts

• charities and foundations

• business consultants

• independent research centres

• think tanks

• citizen scientists, where skills enable analysis

Where are the data from?

• official agencies - mainly central government

• international statistical time series

• individual academics - research grants

• market research agencies

• public records/historical sources

• access to international data via links with other data

archives worldwide

Our data portfolio

UK Surveys International Longitudinal

Large-scale

government

funded surveys

Census Business

Major UK surveys

following

individuals over

time

Multi-nation

aggregate

databanks and

survey data

Census data

1971 to 2011

Range of multi-

media data

sources

Microdata and

administrative

data

Qualitative

UK survey series

• high quality repeated cross-sectional surveys

• individual or household level data

• over topics including health, work, crime, social

attitudes, family expenditure, living costs, housing etc.

Examples:

• Labour Force Survey

• British Crime Survey

• Health Survey for England

• British Social Attitudes

• Annual Population Survey

Cross-national surveys

• Eurobarometers

• European Social Survey

• European Values Survey

• International Social Survey Programme

Longitudinal studies

• British Household Panel Survey

• Understanding Society (2009-)

• English Longitudinal Study of Ageing

• Families and Children Study

• Growing Up in Scotland

• Longitudinal Study of Young People in England

How to search for data?

discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

Data access

• web access to data and metadata

• data are freely available for use by all. Charges may apply for commercial use.

• data available under 3 access levels: OPEN, SAFEGUARDED, CONTROLLED

• data supplied in a variety of formats

• statistical package formats (e.g. SPSS, Stata) • databases and spreadsheets • word processed documents, PDF documents etc.

• some data also available via online data browsing

Accessing safeguarded data

• register with us using UK Federation (HE/FE but we also

issue Federation accounts)

• agree to an End User Licence (EUL)

• appropriate data usage

• citation of data and informing us of re-use

• select data from the Discover data catalogue using

‘Download/Order’ button

• specify a project for which the data are to be used

• download data to local machine in preferred format

Online instant data browsing

Nesstar social surveys

UKDS.stat aggregate global indicators

(some restrictions to HE/FE)

InFUSE aggregate census data

QualiBank qualitative data

APIs are coming soon!

Open data collections

Census - Open Government Licence

• 2011 and 2001 Census aggregate statistics

Survey data - Open Government Licence

• cutdown teaching datasets

Qualitative datasets – Creative Commons 4.0 BY NC

• life story interviews, essays, WWII reports

Aggregate global indicators – bespoke open data license

• World Bank Millennium Development goals

Nesstar: British Social Attitudes - Pay gap

Nesstar: GHS - Age started smoking

Nesstar: GHS - time series

Nesstar: mapping OLS 2013

User support and resources

• help desk, individual user support

• promotional events/ workshops / webinars

• video introductions and tutorials

• user guides/ thematic guides

• case studies of use

• teaching data and resources

• advice on creating, managing and preserving data

Big data investments

• Innovation Fund

• ESRC Big Data Network

• Admin

• Business

• Local government

• Third sector

• Social media

• Working with new data producers

Keep connected

• Subscribe to UK Data Service list:

www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=UKDATASERVICE

• Follow UK Data Service on Twitter: @UKDataService

• Facebook https://www.facebook.com/UKDataService

• YouTube: www.youtube.com/user/UKDATASERVICE

• Helpdesk http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/help/get-in-touch